


Heart Heart Head

by MamaMystique



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Genderbending, collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 07:26:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5325680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MamaMystique/pseuds/MamaMystique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of mini-fics from my Tumblr inbox and rescues from my old fic folders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to prompt me! My Tumblr is http://dangerousconclusions.tumblr.com - my inbox is always open. I want to help this collection grow :)

Home for Bedelia had never been a place.

Her house had always belonged to her work, to her bad memories, to where she rested but never felt safe. Doors could not keep the demons out so she stopped trying. Inside her walls they curled, prowling like phantoms at the edges of her vision, disappearing before she could get a good look. It wasn’t long before she felt less like a hostess to them and more of a singularly private guest.

And then there was Florence.

At the entryway to the new apartment, to the new space another Mrs. Fell might have happily called home, Bedelia half expected her unwelcome haunts to come leaping forth from every dark corner, to purr like contented cats as they settled their hands around her throat. But they did not come. Try as Bedelia did to find them lurking, they could not be found. In their place strode something new, something darker. Something closer.

Hannibal. It was strange at first. Playing pretend - pretending that he was still her objective patient, and that she was still his objective psychiatrist. But pretending required the presence of all manner of things: work, memories, safety. And Bedelia was finding that she no longer had any of those. Every day was a new fear, a new struggle, a new and deeper awakening in the depths. Her efforts needed to be focused elsewhere in the tentative future, not on the past.

It was not until the morning Hannibal returned to her, his wife and not his psychiatrist, bloodied and broken from his encounter with Jack, that she realized what she had blindly made. “You’ve lead them to us,” she whispered, brushing the water-soaked sponge over his cheek. “They’ll be at our door within hours.”

Hannibal looked at her then, his eyelids heavy with pain and exhaustion. “I didn’t know what else to do,” he replied, his voice barely audible. “So I came home.”

Home. Bedelia paused then, the water dripping from the sponge slowly. Her greatest and most fearsome demon closed his eyes then, trusting her in his weakened state. Home - truly she had never thought of them this way, had never seen how…but yes. Home was not a place for Hannibal either: it was a comfort he found in others. And he had found it in her. “I’m glad you did,” she spoke gently, brushing her palm against Hannibal’s unmarred brow. Leaning forward, she pressed a kiss to his lips, one he sleepily returned.


	2. When it Rains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some short angst

It is raining that night when Hannibal returns, his shoes drenched and his fine suit damp. A flash of lightening illuminates the unusual darkness of the apartment, and that is when he sees Bedelia curled up on the settee by the window.

She isn’t paying attention to him, her gaze instead set on the horizon of Florence as an enormous crack splits the sky and sends the glasses rattling inside of the cupboards. But she doesn’t move, doesn’t even shiver as another vicious strike of light claws through the clouds.

“Bedelia?” He questions, removing his jacket and hanging it on the hook before closing the door and plunging the room back into a thick and hazy black.

Another flash in the sky reveals to him her face, staring him down, steel blue eyes glimmering with the remnants of tears. She does not answer him.

Hannibal steps closer, careful to take slow and calculated steps, until he is standing at her side. They stay like that, in perfect silence, until another rumble of thunder makes the rain pound harder at the window.

“Sit with me,” she finally offers.


	3. The Colour Green

The dress Hannibal pulls from inside the box is the color of the forest - deep and somehow bright, like a canopy just touched by the sun. The fabric pools like liquid where it touches the floor, and it is beautiful. But as he unfolds it and lets her see the neckline, the deep plunge relying on such daring straps, Bedelia can’t help the rush of color to her cheeks.

“Do you like it?” He ventures, knowing.

Bedelia swipes her hair from across her shoulder. “Yes. But you know me Hannibal. You know I cannot wear that.”

Hannibal’s eyes crease as her looks at her, the immediate aversion of his gaze by her answer enough. “Why not?”

He is baiting her, and Bedelia can sense herself about to snap. Instead she breathes. “I’m not twenty-five anymore. I haven’t been for a long time.”

Her companion folds the dress neatly over his arm and then approaches her, the thumb of his right hand meeting her shoulder and questing upwards to the flushed pink skin of her face. “You genuinely don’t think you’d look beautiful in this?”

“I’d look like I was trying too hard,” she answers quietly, feeling the tips of his fingers play with her hair. “I’m not in the habit of lying to myself any more often then necessary.”

Hannibal lets the dress slide from his arm to fall on the chair by his side. His right hand locks itself around the base of her neck, his left coming to cup her back and pull her towards him. “Hannibal-“ is all Bedelia manages before he is kissing her, fiercely possessive and overwhelming. When he pulls away she is gasping for air, her lips swollen and her eyes dark.

“This is not a lie,” he whispers against her skin before turning her in his grasp, her back pressed against his chest as he guides her gaze to the full-length mirror in the corner of the room. His fingers play along the curve of her waist, his mouth pressed near her temple. “Let me demonstrate.“


	4. When Words Aren’t Enough

“Bedelia.”

The soft timber of the voice is what pulls her back to consciousness. She is still here. Still at the table. Still in this godforsaken dress. Still clutching a fork in a death grip to her right leg - her only leg. The acknowledgment of what has been done is no longer softened by the drugs or the wine. It hurts, enough to make words hard, enough to make her heart plummet. She blinks the visitor to her grim scene into view, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes.

Hannibal.

Bedelia gasps and nearly chokes, her lips caught in the shape of a panicked scream. He is visibly startled, his frame shaking as he crouches at her side. The clothes he wears are dry but his hair is still wet, just like that night so many years ago when he came to her home.

“Are they still here?”

Bedelia can barely register the words as she shakes her head. Her attackers had been but phantoms in her consciousness. Part of her still believed she was in the nightmare.

The first breaking light of dawn illuminates the display of the table, and she wants to be sick.

“Are you going to finish me?” She manages to whisper, eyes locked on the meal only slightly touched.

Hannibal’s hand comes to rest on her cheek, warmer than she imagined. “No,” he says after a pause. “This was not how I intended.”

“And what did you intend?”

He is silent then, even when Bedelia dares to turn her gaze to him. His eyes are on her tears, watching how she trembles. And there is concern there - not pity, or any manner of things she expected to find. Sadness. Genuine and simmering just below the surface. At once he stands and gathers her into his arms like a bride, and Bedelia lets her head loll back. She has no strength left to protest: the fork slips from her fingers and falls to the floor.

Hannibal carries her through the halls of her own home, the once familiar walls now stretching up like a prison. Bedelia is vaguely aware of him taking her to her room, of how he holds her until her cheek is pressed against his shoulder. As her bed comes in to view she thinks of how nice it would be to sleep: and then, by power of the thought alone her exhaustion grants her rest.

When Bedelia wakes she does not know what time or day it is. She is tucked beneath the sheets like a child, no longer dressed in her gown but in a soft cotton top. She cannot dare to look beneath the covers for fear of what she’ll find, but there is a perfectly folded note laying beside her head on the opposite pillow to distract her.

> _My Darling Bedelia,_
> 
> _I have left your phone at your table side. Please use the number below when you are ready. I could not stay, but know that I will be here should you ever have need of me._
> 
> _You asked me what I intended - I must confess that I still do not know the answer. I have not yet imagined such an ending. But know this: I find the world to be a more interesting place with you in it._
> 
> _Hannibal_
> 
> _P.S. I heard that your lecture on Dante was quite wonderful. I regret that I could not attend. Perhaps another time._

Bedelia reads the letter, once, twice, three times before she folds it back up again. Her phone is charged and within her grasp, just as promised.

Swallowing, Bedelia lifts herself on her arms until she can sit up and pull the covers back from the rest of her body.

The shock has not quite set in fully. But Bedelia makes herself stare, makes herself study the new bandage wrapped around what remains of her left thigh.

He hadn’t said it with words, but words would not have been enough. This was the final, and perhaps only, apology of Hannibal Lecter to Bedelia Du Maurier.


	5. Slipping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rescued from my archive of discarded fics! I present a gender-bent Hanna Belle Lecter paired with Bedelia Du Maurier.

Hanna could feel herself slipping.

Only slightly: in truth, her slipping was still more composed and poised than a great many people she had encountered. She had yet to meet a challenge that she couldn’t come out on top of, or a conversation that she wasn’t in complete and total control of. Gloating served no purpose, but every now and then she relished how easily she could dismantle a person from the inside, out.

“Jack Crawford doesn’t know what you’re capable of.” Oh, Bedelia. Smart, capable, Bedelia. Hanna tilted her head predatorily as she studied the woman made of ice sitting across from her. The cold, gunmetal blue eyes, the cut of her cheeks. She almost seemed like the picture of confidence, and Hanna would have thought her so, had she not been able to smell the trace of fear underneath the delicately flowered perfume Bedelia favored during their sessions.

“Neither do you,” Hanna answered, a smirk pulling at her cheeks ever so slightly. She didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, waiting for Bedelia’s response. The silence of the room was astounding, Hanna eagerly expecting her psychiatrist’s calculated return.

Hanna was hardly ever surprised. But in her expectations of a reply, she instead found a more beautiful sight than she could have ever hoped for. The woman of ice began to melt. It was just a slight movement, so small physically, but so important: Bedelia’s chin titled ever so slightly up, the perfect blonde curls resting on her shoulders shifting to frame her throat as she swallowed deeply. The shadows on her neck danced, slicing across the delicate muscles in ways that Hanna envied.

Hanna knew Bedelia couldn’t miss the way her eyes became fixated on her bodily response. Her psychiatrist let out a soft breath, Hanna still pondering her fascination. Since her training as a surgeon and her love of documenting the human body, she had assumed her interest in Bedelia was simply of the same nature. Something that could be won, controlled. But now, having watched such a delicate crack appear from such a small intrusion, Hanna experienced thoughts in her head she hadn’t entertained involuntarily in years. She wanted to find that crack, pull at it, tearing away the ice to find what was beneath. She wanted to run her fingers along Bedelia’s neck as she breathed, feeling the shift, chasing the shadows with nails and teeth.

Bedelia shifted, trying to break Hanna’s clinical gaze on her throat and failing. She checked her watch, taking another soft, more controlled breath as she read it.

“Our time is up. Red or white?” she asked politely as she stood.

Hanna uncrossed her legs and stood, easily towering over Bedelia. She respected the way her psychiatrist didn’t cower, but rather stood her ground stubbornly, like a large stone in a river. Nothing would move her until the force of the water reduced her to a fraction of herself.

“If you wouldn’t take offense, I must decline today.”

Bedelia smiled quickly, lowering her eyes.

“It’s quite alright.”

And yet Hanna couldn’t will herself to move. She was locked completely, staring down the woman no more than a foot away from her.

Today is just full of surprises, Hanna briefly thought to herself as she reached up to place her hands on Bedelia’s shoulders, the fabric bunching under her grip and Bedelia involuntarily shivering from how cold Hanna’s hands were.

“Hanna, what are you-“

Hanna cut her off, crashing her lips to Bedelia’s. She all but pried them open with her own, teeth dancing along her lower lip. Bedelia’s eyes were wide, but she didn’t move. Distract her, Hanna’s mind cried out, and she obliged. Expertly her tongue flickered out, tracing against Bedelia’s lips.

Bedelia shuddered as her eyes fluttered close, a small moan escaping her.

 _Good girl_ , Hanna whispered, out loud or to herself she didn’t know. She wrapped her hands around either side of Bedelia’s neck, pushing aside her hair and placing her thumbs underneath her jaw as she kissed her again, her tongue seeking out and finding Bedelia’s. Her psychiatrist returned the kiss carefully, stunned, and Hanna knew she only had a moment to act.

Retracting her lips, Hanna shifted Bedelia’s chin up with her thumbs, fingers tightening on the back of her throat as she placed soft kisses down her sternocleidomastoid, down to where it met her sternum.

Bedelia swallowed again, and Hanna chased the movement of her muscles with her mouth, finding her reward in feeling the shift underneath the tip of her tongue. She tasted a slight flush of sweat, the acidity of the perfume burning on her taste buds as the scent overwhelmed her nose. It was perfect, so perfectly Bedelia, and Hanna smiled as she pulled back, watching Bedelia watching her, torn between arousal and fear and shock.

Without a word, Hanna released Bedelia’s neck, silencing the voice inside her head telling her that she should not have done that, she should not slip, she is slipping, she cannot slip. Hanna turns away and exits silently, relishing the level control she had for a moment over Bedelia, and realizing that Bedelia held the same amount of power over her then.

Smart, capable Bedelia, woman of ice.


	6. Ritual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another fic from my Tumblr written several months back.

It had been for purely selfish reasons that Hannibal bought her the vanity. It was a truly elegant piece, made of cherry and with three antique mirrors that curved and provided a semi-surrounded desk for whomever sat at it. The drawers were small and neat, adorned with small golden handles. Bedelia had smiled when she discovered it in their newly-shared room, commenting that such gifts were unnecessary, but she moved all of her makeup that night to it anyways.

She looked like royalty whenever she sat there, legs tucked under the seat and the trails of her robe pooling on the floor. Hannibal had realized early on that while many things fascinated him about Bedelia, it was her rituals he favored: brushing her hair in the morning, drinking a cup of cappuccino, and practicing her yoga. But none drew his attention more than her nightly application of moisturizer. 

It seemed strange, but watching her rub the custom honey-scented lotion into her arms, her legs, her neck, her face, was hypnotizing. Even more so now that he could watch her from the bed, the mirror reflecting several angles for him to consider. She looked so calm and so poised, her skin practically glowing when she finished and climbed into bed. That particular scent was what Hannibal had come to associate with their time together, the lingering comfort of something both rich and light dancing on her body as he held her close and breathed deeply. 

So when she changed the moisturizer, he was admittedly less than pleased. Bedelia had laughed and called him childish, saying that there wasn’t really anything he could do: her previous bottle had run out, and the risk of acquiring another custom batch was far greater than she was willing to go for something as trivial as lotion. But it wasn’t trivial to Hannibal. Now at night she smelled like lavender, and while it was still nice, it wasn’t her. 

Hannibal bore with the new lotion for a week before he came home with an enormous box, delivered and re-routed and purposefully put under the wrong name. When Bedelia opened it to find six new bottles of her previous moisturizer, she sighed after her gracious acceptance and called him obsessed. But she indulged him with a laugh that night, unscrewing the lid and beginning her ritual again.


	7. Wedding Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another rescue from my discards!

They spend their “wedding night” in near silence. 

With their paperwork still being filed and processed on the flat in Italy that will soon be their discrete residence, they are forced to spend what one might hope to be a luxurious, celebratory evening instead cooped up inside a seemingly ever-shrinking suite.

Bedelia disappears behind the door to the bathroom upon their arrival, and faintly Hannibal can hear her turning the knobs of the shower. He wonders if she is crying, and the thought wounds him somehow. He tries not to think of her, his therapist, his wife, and strips himself of his jacket and tie before arranging the stiff couch into some semblance of a bed. It is their routine, only now Hannibal feels as if Bedelia is both unbearable close and frighteningly far away. The fear is almost childish.

When she emerges, her skin is flushed and she is wrapped in a plush white towel, her once precarious up-do now sticking in wet strands to her shoulders. She is still beautiful.

Hannibal turns away to offer her some façade of privacy they both know doesn’t exist. Pretending it does doesn’t make it any better, but pretending is what they do. Pretend friendship. Pretend marriage. Somewhere inside himself Hannibal finds a longing to be blind to their imaginary aspects. Perhaps in another life he could have married her, could have loved her, and maybe she could have loved him. He hears the gentle rush of her towel meeting the floor, the rustle of crisp sheets.

“Hannibal.” she whispers, his real name and not the one she vowed herself to not two hours prior. When he peers over his shoulder, he finds her staring into space, curled on her side beneath the covers of the bed that is much too large for her. Quietly, she peels back the quilt near to her body, outstretching her hand on the exposed, empty space.

He sighs, his chest heavy as he approaches her softly, his eyes downcast in a silent insistence. “Bedelia,” he responds, unspoken words telling her that she does not have to. That their union is binding only on paper. That she does not have to accept him, not tonight, not out of guilt.

“Please.”

Her voice trembles. There are many reasons why.


	8. Hunger, Starvation

Hannibal is starving.

Not quite in the literal sense, although he eagerly prepares dinner that night: fresh oysters he picked up on a drive to the coast. One of Bedelia’s favorites, something she had mentioned once before this entire affair truly began and he had never forgotten. His knife nearly slips as he thinks of her, thinking of how he plans tonight to be the night he slinks past their boundaries, not knowing that she is upstairs planning much the same.

She presents herself that evening in a solid black dress that modestly covers her arms but exposes the tops of her shoulders. He dresses in one of the only suit jackets that now remains in his collection, and he nearly smiles at how flawlessly they dance and spin around one another.

He is starving.

Wine is brought to his lips, and an oyster to hers: maroon eyes shudder as blue flutter close, head tilting back delicately. Bedelia’s hair is like spun gold, and she allows herself to admit silently that she likes his hair how he wears it now, slightly messed and falling over his eyes. She likes him.

He toasts and she accepts, and she is starving. 

Bedelia is beautiful and Hannibal tells her as much, watching her careful gaze as she accepts the compliment. Her hand brushes his as she reaches to hand him the last oyster, and his finger purposefully curls around hers. Bedelia’s breath stops, as does his when he feels her resulting tremble, and they are both starving.

Hannibal’s hand is around her wrist, kissing the skin there, and she is backed against the table. She whispers his name and her free hand slides around his neck. Bedelia pulls at his hair that she likes so much as he lifts her onto the wooden surface, and she lets herself fall back onto it like a delicate feast. They lock eyes. Starving.

Hannibal’s lips and teeth are on her neck and she is exaltedly sighing below him, the restraint built inside her mind beginning to ebb as she drags him into a kiss.

There is no mind paid to the dishes, the silverware, the vase. None of them could satisfy the hunger, and they fall to the floor in shattered pieces along with the empty shells of oysters and bottles of spilled wine.  
Only when they are alone on the table, Bedelia’s torn dress and Hannibal’s ripped suit cast away to the floor, does the hunger begin to satiate itself with moans and growls. Hers matches his in its ferocity, and they devour one another so sweetly, so perfectly, until there is nothing left but bones.

Bedelia is breathing heavily, Hannibal panting near her ear, and she finally laughs at the breathless mess of them both. She tells him he kissed her like a man starved, and he can only respond with a smile in his eyes and a kiss to her open lips.


	9. If you keep looking at me like that...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompted on Tumblr as #34 - “If you keep looking at me like that we won’t make it to a bed.” Definitely rated 'E.'

Hannibal had never been one to defile a space other than the bedroom with anything so base as sex. Frankly, he did not understand the impulse – or rather, he never had before. Not until he met Bedelia. Not until they ran away together, until they shared a flat, until every minute in her presence felt like a delicious agony. 

“If you keep looking at me like that we won’t make it to a bed,” she had whispered, and that was when Hannibal became acutely aware of his eyes on her, of how desperately he caught himself wanting. When had his thoughts begun to betray him? When had he ever been so out of control?

They had made love before, but never like this – this was something new. It was Bedelia who pushed him down on the couch that night, Bedelia who divested them of their clothes, who stroked and kissed him, who knelt astride him like some glorious goddess and found her pleasure while he guided her hips, staring star-struck up to where her lips parted in a delighted cry. He may have taken her to bed, but she was the one who  _took_ him, who made him not care for a moment about the finish of a table or the scratch of the carpet. No surface was exempt from her eye, and every new foray was hers to claim until she was empress of the flat, empress of the world, empress of him.

“If you keep looking at me like that we won’t make it to a bed,” she would say, but Hannibal knew she had no intentions of ever making it there at all. God knows he tried at first: he would stand and she would push, he would open his mouth to protest and she would find something so much sweeter to replace his words with. The image of her like this, undone, sharply contrasted with the glacial exterior he had come to expect, and now he would have it no other way at all.

“If you keep looking at me like that we won’t make it to a bed,” he growled, hoisting her up onto the dinner table, one of the last sacred spaces. He didn’t care. He parted her thighs and found her wet with his fingers, his lips, his tongue. She dripped like the finest delicacy, and he sighed in exaltation as she twisted herself onto her stomach, a wicked smile on her face. He reached forwards as he curled over her, teeth sinking into her shoulder, hands pushing the wine glasses and plates away from her body and onto the floor.

“I’ll have you,” she panted, “in that – ah! – kitchen of, oh  _God_ , yours someday.” 

“Yes,” he whispered, delighted in the breathy tone of her voice, lips finding the pulse of her neck, “I know you will.” Without a trace of shame, he looked forward to it.


	10. I think I'm in love with you...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompted on Tumblr as #32 - “I think I’m in love with you and I’m terrified.”

The words bubble up in Hannibal’s throat, but he knows better than to say them. They are dancing together, gliding amongst the elite of Italian society, two strangers playing pretend. And they are  _beautiful_ , far more beautiful than he ever could have hoped for, and part of him knows it is because of her.

Bedelia glows amongst the crowd. Removed from the starkness of her Baltimore home and placed under the candlelight of Italy she melts, sinfully and slowly, and Hannibal cannot get enough. Her skin tans, her hair shimmers like gold, and she is so magnificently alive he feels positively drunk. He knows without a doubt that anyone who catches her gaze feels the same. A possessive jealousy tugs at his heart, and before anyone else can ask he steals her away for another dance. He doesn’t think he could bear to watch her without him.

They are alone and the words threaten to escape him again, curling into the night and around her body. He doesn’t know what it means, doesn’t know why this is happening, but even captive by choice within the walls of their flat she flows effortlessly, the silk of her touch pairing well with the harsh bite of her words. There is something about ethics. Something about aesthetics. Something, something, but all Hannibal knows is that the brocade of her dress is rough against his fingers as he pulls her close to him, hand dipping at the curve of her lower back, and they are kissing.

There is no discussion of ethics, of borders crossed, of lines drawn in the sand. Those lines were miles back by now, somewhere in Baltimore and far away from here. Bedelia does not hesitate but she controls: when she has had enough, she bites his lip.

In the dark is the place where the words become real, with the feeling of her back pressed against his chest, his arm wrapped around her body and moving with the even breath of her dreamless sleep. His nose is buried in her hair and he breathes her in, every scent and sensation until he is overwhelmed: he could kill her, he could kiss her, he could love her, he could destroy her. All at once he knows what is going to happen, why he is so scared. He needs her, depends on her, but she has never needed him. Not truly, not in the way he wishes, and she never would. She was going to ruin him.

He kisses her neck just to be sure, and when she does not stir he lets them free.

“I think I’m in love with you,” he confesses to her unconscious form, and it feels like a last plea to a starving beast. “I think I am in love with you and I’m terrified.”


End file.
